The views published here are of an ecosocialist nature and from the broad red, green and black political spectrum. The opinions expressed are the personal opinions of the writers and are not necessarily the view of any political parties or groupings that they belong to. Please feel free to comment on the posts here. If you would like to contact us directly, you can email us at mike.shaughnessy@btinternet.com. Follow the blog on Twitter @MikeShaugh

Saturday, 30 September 2017

The war
without guns between the Spanish state and the 80% majority of Catalan people
who support their parliament’s October 1 independence referendum is reaching a
climax at the time of writing on September 29.

On October 1,
it will become clear whether the Catalans have humiliated the central Spanish
People’s Party (PP) government by succeeding to vote; suffered a setback
because the 10,000 Spanish National Police and paramilitary Civil Guards in
Catalonia succeed in closing polling stations; or achieved a mixed result due
to only some voters getting into polling stations.

In this
decisive battle in Catalonia’s long struggle for self-determination against a
centralised Spanish state, the answers finally given to some tough questions
will decide the outcome.

Police response?

For example,
will the Catalan police (the Mossos d’Esquadra) carry out the role the Spanish
state prosecutor and judge of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC)
have sadistically assigned them?

This is to
seal off a 100 metre perimeter around all polling stations by September 30 and
defend it — if needed with the help of the Civil Guard and Spanish National
Police — against those seeking to vote.

This may
sound like a simple policing operation, but education unions and parents
associations have already developed a counter tactic: to keep schools open all
weekend with programs of activities. They are inviting parents, students and
the community to participate: in short, organising school occupations.

This means
that on October 1, the schools that make up two-thirds of voting centres will
be full of people inside and surrounded by people seeking to vote outside.
Mossos d’Esquadra leaders have said that in this situation, they will not take
action that would worsen public security.

Faced with
this, will the Civil Guard and Spanish National Police try to force the Catalan
police to act against their fellow Catalans? How would the Catalan police
respond?

On September
27, Mossos d’Esquadra head Josep Lluis Trapero informed the TSJC and the
Spanish state prosecutor that the Catalan police would carry out instructions
to seal off polling centres. However, they would do so in accordance with the
three principles of “guaranteeing public order and citizen safety and avoiding
a greater evil”.

Given this,
Catalan daily Ara pointed out on September 28 that only a mobilisation large
enough to dissuade police action would guarantee that the referendum would take
place.

Blows and counterblows

This challenge
is well understood by the Catalan government, the Catalan social organisations
organising volunteers in the referendum and the growing mass of people
committed to ensuring it happens.

That
awareness showed in the rapid response to the instruction to seal off the
schools and other voting centres, and hand keys and security codes to police.
The Spanish state prosecutor in Catalonia issued the instruction on September
26 (without a court order) and it was repeated the next day by a TSJC judge.

Yet by
September 27, the education collective We Are School, the Alliance of Education
Workers Unions of Catalonia (USTEC) and General Union of Workers (UGT) had
launched the campaign Let’s Open The Schools.

The Open
Schools web site — through which people could offer to maintain school
occupations — was set up at the same time: in one day it attracted more than
50,000 volunteers.

For its part,
the Catalan government, sensitive to the situation of school principals and
community health centre directors, had its health and education ministers
assume collective responsibility for all polling stations in schools and health
centres.

This was a
counter to the TSJC judge’s order, which made these principals and directors
legally responsible for ensuring centres were kept closed.

On September
28, in a ceremony in the central Catalan government building in Barcelona,
hundreds of school principals handed over the keys to their centres to Catalan
Premier Carles Puigdemont. The act symbolised the Catalan government taking
responsibility for having schools open on October 1.

Puigdemont
said: “[The government] will go right to the end in taking responsibility for
October 1 ... Thank you for your perseverance, for everything that you have
done and will do — not for the government, not for the parliament, but for the
citizens.

“Going to
vote has turned into an epic, heroic exercise. I understand the anguish of
everyone, because we have all become targets of threats and intimidation.”

To the
familiar chant of “We Will Vote”, the short ceremony ended with a new addition:
“We Will Open.”

Growing insurrection

In his
speech, Puigdemont said that “for every difficulty there are two solutions, for
every threat three hopes”. He added: “There is a growing multitude of people
who are joining the new majority who want to vote.”

This last
comment referred to the extraordinary growth of the movement in support of the
referendum since September 20, when Civil Guard raids on Catalan government
buildings led to arrests of 13 senior government officials. That evening,
40,000 people gathered outside the Catalan economy ministry while Civil Guards
inside combed through files and computers.

On that
night, deputy premier Oriol Junqueras first uttered the phrase that has become
a sort of motto of the movement: “The government has done all it can, but only
the people can save the people.”

Since then,
the movement to ensure the referendum happens has expanded so rapidly in
Barcelona, other main provincial capitals and in “the shires” that it has been
very difficult to keep track. Major features to date have been:

University
students go into action. The flood of university students into the campaign
first became visible on September 21: they were dominant among the 20,000
protesting outside the TSJC building in support of Catalan government officials
who had been detained the previous day.

Since then,
the epicentre of student activism has been the occupation and sit-in at
Barcelona University known as “Caputxinada 2017” — a reference to a famous 1966
anti-dictatorship teach-in that was held in a Capuchin monastery.

The
occupation has already been the site of a broad September 29 public meeting
involving both pro-independence parties — Together For The Yes (JxSí) and the
People’s Unity List (CUP) — as well as deputy Barcelona mayor Gerardo Pisarello
from Barcelona en Comú.

It was also
the organising centre for a September 28-29 university student strike, as well
as a practical help centre for people to find out where to vote.

Other Catalan
universities have been the focus of discussions about how the movement for the
referendum can best advance.

The entry of
high school students. On September 27-28, high school students entered the
struggle for the referendum with a 48-hour strike that featured marches down
highways and teach-ins in schools.

The sight of
high school students marching out of school in support of an “illegal”
referendum caused apoplexy in the ranks of the ruling PP. The Spanish education
minister instructed prosecutors to investigate if teachers were complicit in
the walk-outs. The leader of the PP in Catalonia called for education to be
taken away from regional governments and recentralised under the Spanish
government.

The unions
begin to stir. The more militant unions, most notably firefighters, are
mobilising to defend the referendum. The firefighters union resolved to carry
pro-referendum propaganda on fire trucks, participate as organised contingents
in pro-referendum demonstrations and have offered to defend polling stations.

On September
28, Barcelona firefighters marched through the city to the Barcelona University
occupation. They then erected a huge four-story-high banner reading
“Democracy!” outside the Museum of Catalan History.

The broad
union movement — covering the two main confederations, Workers Commissions
(CCOO) and the General Union of Labour (UGT), but also the anarcho-syndicalist
General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and other radical forces — is being
shaken up by a discussion over how and when to hold a general strike.

The CGT and
other smaller unions have announced they will strike between October 3 and
October 8.

Other social
sectors. As with fire trucks, so with tractors. Rural Catalonia has been the
site of tractor processions in support of October 1. Farmers supporting the
referendum are also organising to defend polling stations with their tractors.

Since
September 20, there have also been statements — often taken out as full-page
advertisements in the print media — from other Catalonian sectors: small and
medium business’s “Lighthouse Manifesto” giving “unconditional support to the
process launched by our parliament”; a statement from 3000 cultural workers
condemning the police intervention and supporting October 1; statements from
progressive Christian organisations in favour of Catalonia’s right to
self-determination; and small printers and photocopying shops forming a network
to help the Catalan government with printing in case of further Civil Guard
confiscations.

Conclusion

The fight
between the Spanish government and the Catalan movement has escalated almost
daily. In a rising tide of legal and police attacks, there have been more than
90 actions and more 140 web sites closed down since September 6. The growing
counter-tide of revolt is making the political price for the PP government very
high.

A September
28 El Mon article quoted “a source close to the government who did not wish to
be identified” who acknowledged this reality.

Yet, as the
same source remarked, for the Spanish government, the cost of retreat would be
higher. Therefore, all the remaining police and legal resources under Madrid’s
command are to be hurled against the Catalan movement.

The Catalan
mass organisations have called on every supporter of the country’s right to
decide to make a last effort to ensure that this aggression fails — and that as
a result, the PP administration experiences its own richly deserved crisis.

[Dick Nichols
is Green Left Weekly’s European correspondent, based in Barcelona.]

Thursday, 28 September 2017

As news
comes today of another high profile Green Party member defecting to Labour, the
question arises of what role there is for the Greens in the UK’s new look political
arena. Writing at Labour List, Josiah Mortimer, the newly
installed editor of the Left Foot Forward website explains his decision to
leave the Greens and join Labour:

...a realisation that the Greens will,
sadly, be a one-MP party for many years. Coming third in Bristol – and failing
to achieve second place anywhere else – was a hammer blow when many expected
Molly Scott Cato to win. Caroline Lucas is an incredible and inspiring MP. But
the Greens are at risk of remaining The Brighton Party. It is through no great
fault of their own, but it is a reality nonetheless.

Although he
goes to concede that in Labour:

Green voices are needed within the
(Labour) party to put the case for environmental and social justice as being as being
two sides of the same coin. The party has made great strides in realising this.

He concludes
by saying:

our movement is nothing if not red
and green. Thankfully, both exist and thrive within both parties.

Perhaps
Josiah knows more about the Green-ness going on in the Labour Party than I do, and to be
sure their environmental policies have taken a turn for the better since Jeremy
Corbyn became leader of the party. I do hope it has moved on from being led by SERAthough, the Labour Party environmental
grouping. SERA is a typical environmentalist outfit, which aims to deal with
‘environmental problems’ as an externality, despite some of the rhetoric on its
website. A shopping list of actions to be taken, rather than a coherent joined
up philosophy.

Which brings
us to ecosocialism, which does have a joined up ecological and socialist ideology. Josiah is an ecosocialist and
until today was a Green Left supporter, and I know of other ecosocialists who
have defected to Corbyn’s led Labour Party. Josiah seems to think he can
further his agenda in the Labour Party more than in the Green Party. Maybe he
is right.

And this is
the thing at the moment for many Greens, ecosocialist or otherwise. How can we
individually best pursue our beliefs and interests? For the Green Party as a
whole, what is its role to be now that British politics, on the left
especially, has been transformed by the Corbyn effect? Much soul searching, but
not a lot in the way of conclusions are forthcoming though.

After this
year’s election, I wrote a piece for Left Foot Forward entitled ‘Is it time for the Green Party to
affiliate to Labour?’
The Green groups on Facebook were ablaze with condemnation of my post, although
no one came up with anything different, than just plodding on in the same
fashion as we have been. Other than some on the right of the Green Party,
saying we should drop our leftish social policies, and concentrate on deep
green issues.

It would be a
mistake to withdraw into a ‘fundi’ or ‘lifestyle’ position in my view, as it is
very much a minority position amongst the public at large. So, the best
suggestion has been to do nothing different, and wait for the political wheel to turn
again. It could be a very long wait indeed though.

Writing in Red Pepper, the Green Party’s Derek Wall, points
out that the Green surge of 2015 and the Corbyn induced Labour surge, are part of
the same movement for change, and so the Greens have influenced Labour, and may
continue to do so. But without the electoral threat to Labour that the Greens
did pose, it is a debatable issue whether there is much more mileage in that
direction.

For sure
there are policy differences between the Greens and Labour, chiefly over
nuclear power and weapons and Brexit, but there is also a cultural difference
in the way each party operates. Labour is fond of internal party control
freakery, as was demonstrated at its conference this week, the Greens not so much.

One thing
that is undeniable is that the landscape of British politics has changed
completely, and we look to be back to two party politics, in England at least.
Maybe even Scotland will follow, although the Scottish electoral systems do
allow for proportional representation, so things are a little different there. In
general though, can we afford to just stand still?

Monday, 25 September 2017

When will the
Labour Party come clean on its Brexit policy? The ongoing fudge on the issue,
which admittedly served them well at this year’s general election, is becoming
rather tedious now. You will get differently nuanced views from Keir Starmer,
shadow Brexit spokesperson, John McDonald, shadow chancellor and the leader
Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour had a golden
opportunity, nay a duty, to state unambiguously, what their Brexit policy is,
at their party conference this week in Brighton. In what was reminiscent of the new Labour
years, conference was denied an opportunity to take a stance, one way or the
other, on key issues like membership of the single market and customs union. A
solid, unequivocal position could have taken, but no, the only difference with
the Blair years was that the dictatorship was of the proletariat, on the face
of it anyway. There is more to democracy than numbers.

The
leadership of the Labour Party was desperate to close down debate on the issue,
and succeeded by launching a campaign to members through its Momentum grouping,
against having a debate and vote on this crucial issue for the country.
Momentum organised members into voting for debates on other issues instead.

There was a fairly short and vague debate, leading to a statement being put out by the
party National Executive Committee (NEC), which is controlled by the leadership,
but no vote at conference. To say that the statement is vapid, is probably an
understatement, but it was the best word I could come up with having seen what the
NEC cooked up, according
to the Huffington Post.

The statement
is mainly a criticism of the Tory government’s disastrous handling of the
negotiations so far, which is fair enough, as they have made a right mess of
things, but Labour has been no clearer than the Tories on its position, and
wilfully refuses to do so.

The statement
mentions worker’s rights, in a nod to the unions, and confirms a transitional
period of Brexit would be sought. And says Labour will not scapegoat immigrants
and would confirm existing EU immigrants can stay in the country, on the same
basis they have now.

We knew all of this, as it has been stated before.

In a classic
piece of non-speak, the statement declares:

Labour is clear that we need a tariff
and impediment- free trading relationship with the European Union. Labour’s
priority is an outcome that puts jobs, living standards and the economy first.
The precise institutional form of the new trading and customs relationship
needs to be determined by negotiation. Labour will not support any future
arrangement that sees the introduction of a hard border, or which restricts
freedom of movement between Ireland and the UK.

In short,
have your cake and eat it, just like the Tories are promising. But this is not
on offer from the EU, and likely never will be. Labour surely knows this.

It is plainly
apparent that this is an exercise in party management for Labour, where the
vast majority of its MPs want to either remain in the European Union (EU) or
have the softest of Brexits. Far be it from me to support calls from the Labour
First and Progress groupings within the Labour Party, but most of Labour’s
members and voters want the same outcome.

There is
mention in the statement of respecting the referendum result, but the question
on the referendum ballot was, ‘do you want to remain in or leave the EU?' By
leaving the EU and joining the European Free Trade Area, which we were a member
of before we joined the EU, would fulfil that vote. The question wasn’t do you
want to leave the customs union or do you want to bar foreigners from living in
the UK, so why all of this pious respecting of a vague, and closely run result? Who
will represent the 16 million people who wanted to remain in the EU? Not Labour
it seems.

Sunday, 24 September 2017

Forty-one
Spanish Civil Guard raids on Catalan government-related buildings and private
homes on September 20 led to the arrest of 13 high-level Catalan government
officials and harvested a lot of “suspect material” for the prosecutors charged
with stopping Catalonia’s October 1 independence referendum. However, the raids
have provoked a mass revolt in response.

The haul
included 10 million ballot papers stored in a printery warehouse in the central
Catalan town of Bigues i Riells.

The proposed
referendum, which the Spanish government considers illegal, is part of the long
and growing struggle by the “autonomous community” of Catalonia, in the north
of the Spanish state, to self-determination.

The
suppression of Catalan national rights and culture was a big feature of the
1939-75 fascist Franco dictatorship, and the struggle for national rights
against a heavily centralised Spanish state has escalated in recent years. For
instance, 1 million people marched on Catalonia’s national day on September 11,
the sixth year in a row the day was the scene of huge demonstrations in favour
of self-determination.

The raid and the revolt

The raids are
intended to stop the referendum, but also landed the central Spanish government
of People’s Party (PP) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy with a mass revolt by tens
of thousands of outraged Catalans. Only too conscious of this reminder of Civil
Guard operations during the Franco dictatorship, they protested outside the
buildings being raided and occupied the centre of Barcelona and other Catalan
cities and towns.

People were
responding to the call of the Catalan government and the Catalan mass
organisations — the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Catalan language and
culture association Omnium Cultural — to maintain peaceful mass protests up
until October 1. The aim is to make the Spanish government pay the highest
possible price for its “de facto coup” (phrase of Catalan Premier Carles
Puigdemont).

Their call
was also backed by political forces and institutions that do not necessarily
support Catalan independence, but defend Catalan sovereignty. For example,
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau publicly backed the street protests and warned Rajoy
that he would find “the Catalan people more united than ever”.

In Madrid,
radical anti-austerity force Unidos Podemos condemned the raids. Its MPs in the
Spanish parliament staged a protest outside the building and later joined a
rally in support of Catalonia’s right to decide. The Madrid rally, held in the
central Puerta del Sol, was one of at least 40 that took place across the
Spanish state on the evening of the raids.

Twenty major
institutions of Catalan civil society representing 3000 Catalan social
organisations — including the two main trade union confederations, Barcelona
Football Club, and cultural organisations groups such as the Barcelona Atheneum
to the Third Sector — condemned the raids. They called for the release of the
detainees and reaffirmed their support for Catalonia’s institutions.

The Civil
Guard raids, which came after the Spanish finance ministry took full control of
Catalan spending, were aimed at dismantling the infrastructure of the October 1
referendum. Those arrested were 13 senior Catalan government officials in
charge of computer technology, communications and finance.

The most
senior were the secretary of the Catalan treasury Lluis Salvardo, the
secretary-general of the department of deputy-premier Josep Maria Jove and
treasurer Oriol Junqueras. Jove and Salvardo have been the two officials presumed
responsible for referendum preparations.

Also arrested
were the owners of the warehouse holding the printed material related to the
referendum.

The charges
laid are not yet fully known, but presumably are disobeying a lawful
instruction, obstructing the course of justice and misuse of public funds. This
last charge carries a prison term, as does the most serious charge that may
used — that of sedition.

The huge
public response to the raids started when the news spread through social
networks and people began to gather outside the buildings being targeted, most
importantly the economy ministry in central Barcelona.

The protests
soon became thousands strong. After the Catalan mass organisations called on
everyone to gather outside the economy ministry, more than 40,000 (council
police figure) turned up to protest the raids and reaffirm their determination
to vote.

“We shall
vote!”, “They shall not pass!”, “Out with the forces of occupation!”, “Where is
Europe?” were some of the chants that echoed across Barcelona until midnight,
accompanied by singing of the anti-Francoist resistance hymn L'Estaca (“The
Stake”) and the Catalan national anthem Els Segadors (“The Reapers”).

As protesters
gathered outside the raided buildings, waving banners and posters produced on
home printers (the Civil Guard had confiscated most of the official referendum
posters) the workers inside draped banners and thank you messages out of the
windows.

The protests
cut major Barcelona thoroughfares such as Via Laietana, where the workers from
the Workers Commissions trade union building came out to lead the picket
outside the Catalan foreign affairs ministry across the street.

One reason
the protests swelled so rapidly was because students from Catalonia’s main
universities abandoned classes to join them. Behind banners with messages such
as “Empty the lecture theatres, fill the streets”, students from the
out-of-town Autonomous University of Barcelona poured onto the trains into
central Barcelona.

At 10pm, with
central Barcelona still full of protestors, a loud banging of pots and pans
(cassolada) began, as people in all suburbs came out onto their balconies to
show what they thought about the Civil Guard operation.

Catalonia-wide protest

Protest
rallies were also held in cities and towns across Catalonia on the evening of
September 20. In the provincial capital of Girona, 13,000 people took part
according to the municipal police — 13% of the total population.

Moreover,
many people from provincial Catalonia left work early to join the Barcelona
rallies.

The mood of
the protests was one of determination to see the fight against the Spanish state
intervention through to the end — Catalan rights re-won in the struggles
against the Franco dictatorship had to be defended at any cost.

One typical
comment from young people was that “our grandparents didn’t suffer under
Francoism so that we would let it reappear”.

The rallies
were peaceful and disciplined, a reflection of the shared understanding that
the street clashes that have nearly always been standard fare in Barcelona
demonstrations would only provide the Rajoy government with an excuse to ramp
up repression.

The approach
of organised passive resistance scored an important win when armed Spanish
National Police, supported by a helicopter, failed to enter the headquarters of
the left-nationalist, anti-capitalist People’s Unity List (CUP).

The CUP
headquarters were defended by a human barrier of up to 2000 supporters and
sympathisers, led by present and former CUP MPs in the Catalan parliament.

A comic
aspect of the defence, which ended after seven hours of siege, was the
instruction that no-one was allowed to smoke a joint on the picket line: if
they wished to, they had to go inside the building. According to one
participant, the atmosphere inside the CUP headquarters was unbreathable.

That,
however, was a small price to pay for getting every last piece of CUP
referendum propaganda out of its headquarters and distributed.

Will the
referendum happen? All the signs now point to rising conflict between the
central Spanish government and the Catalan mass movement and government.

In his early
afternoon address on behalf of the Catalan government, Puigdemont said: “From
now until October 1 an attitude both of firmness and serenity will be needed,
of alertness and of readiness to complain about the abuses and illegalities
into which the Spanish state is falling. But on October 1 we’ll be leaving home
with a voting paper and we’ll be making use of it.”

‘Illegal’

Rajoy replied
with his own “institutional message”: “You know that this referendum cannot now
be celebrated. It was never legal nor legitimate, now it is nothing more than a
chimera or, what is worse, the excuse that some seem to be seeking to further
deepen the rift they have caused in Catalan society…

“I insist, do
not continue, you have no legitimacy. Return to law and democracy, let the
people put these fateful days behind them.”

In case that
appeal didn’t work, the Spanish PM cited his “determination to have legality
enforced without renouncing any of the instruments of our rule of law.”

There can be
no doubt about the determination of the central government to stop a referendum
that would, if the latest polls are correct, see a 60% turnout and an easy win
for the independence option.

If, despite
the latest setbacks, the Catalan government still manages to equip polling
stations with ballot boxes and papers, voters will in all likelihood find
Spanish national police blocking the entrance.

Puigdemont
has announced there will be 2700 polling stations. The plan of the Rajoy
government seems to be to mobilise the 5000 available Spanish National Police
to block voters. The police are to be housed on three ferries that have been
berthed in the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona. Waterside workers in both
ports have already voted not to service the vessels.

The Spanish
authorities may first try to do the job of repression by placing the
17,000-strong Catalan police force under their control. However, the signs are
that they do not trust the Catalan police to discipline angry crowds of fellow
Catalans demanding entrance to polling stations.

That
impression will only have been strengthened by a September 21 circular by
Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero, in which he stated that force should
only be used in the very last instance, when public order was under threat.

Showdown

In the
intensifying battle for hearts and minds, the Rajoy government’s message of the
need to defend “the law” is now being repeated ad nauseam by the mainstream
Spanish media.

“Opinion
formers” get apoplectic about the “lawless secessionist threat”, but the
Catalan case doesn’t even get a look-in — with the possible exception of the
program El Intermedio on the Sixth channel.

The Spanish
public is thus being prepared to feel that Catalonia “had it coming” if the
Rajoy government decides to use more of the “instruments of the rule of law” at
its disposal — such as fully suspending the Catalan government, arresting its
leaders or closing down Catalan public media. It also prepares the public for
any disturbing footage that might emerge of ordinary people being bashed for
insisting on their right to vote.

The level of
protest and resistance provoked in Catalonia by the PP government’s legal
aggression already has the potential to lead to a major political crisis in the
Spanish state.

In the short
run, the minority Rajoy government enjoys majority parliamentary support for
its crackdown against Catalonia. This support is enthusiastic on the part of
new right hipster party Citizens, and obedient but sometimes shamefaced on the
part of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), the traditional social
democratic party.

However,
given the prospect of an intensifying spiral of Catalan protest and Spanish
police repression, the PSOE could increasingly pay for its complicity with the
PP’s iron fist. Stress levels in its Catalan sister organisation — the Party of
Socialists of Catalonia (PSC) — are rising, as more PSC mayors and members
demand an end to the repression.

If that
continues — as seems certain — Unidos Podemos would then be placed to win the
struggle with the PSOE for leadership of the left. The greater the mass
resistance in Catalonia, the more possible that outcome will be.

At the time
of writing (September 21), the unity between the Catalan mass organisations,
the government and the bulk of citizens supporting a Catalan right to decide
(between 70% and 80%) is clear. The signs are that the mass of supporters of
Catalan sovereignty are taking to heart the call of Catalan vice-president
Oriol Junqueras: “We [the government] have done what we can, but only the
people can save the people.”

Ongoing mobilisation

On September
21, an all-day demonstration outside the courthouse hearing the charges against
the arrested officials swelled to tens of thousands; students staged sit-downs
on one of Barcelona’s main thoroughfares; a debate among pro-independence
leaders before a crowd of a thousand at the Autonomous University has
confronted the issue of when, where and how to carry out a general strike in
support of the referendum; “illegal” mass paste-ups have attracted so much
support that the police and Civil Guard have had to leave them alone; and, at
10pm, the night’s cassolada was as noisy as the one 24 hours before.

Late in the
day, Puigdemont reassured Catalonia that the referendum would go ahead,
announcing a new website where voters could find out where they should vote. He
concluded by saying that every vote — for or against independence — would be a
blow against the authoritarian and arrogant PP government.

Given the
atmosphere in Catalonia, those words were an invitation for ever-greater
mobilisations to make sure that October 1 happens.

Saturday, 23 September 2017

Socialism was
originally seen as victory in a struggle for justice. The proletarians,
concluded the Communist Manifesto, “have nothing to lose but their chains. They
have a world to win. WORKING MEN[sic] OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!”

All this
remains true. Working women and men continue to suffer exploitation, in the
workplace and throughout a society ruled by capitalism’s money-power.
Structural unemployment, along with increasing divisions of wealth and poverty,
the curse of indebtedness and the militarism of the capitalist state–all this,
and more, continues to afflict the people. Now as in 1848, workers need a
revolutionary socialist transformation. They need to unite, and to again quote
the Manifesto, achieve “an association in which the free development of each is
the condition of the free development of all.”

But the world
we have to win is profoundly changed from the world of 1848. It is a world not
simply to be won, but also to be saved from a terrible affliction. A day of
reckoning has arrived far beyond anything humanity has ever experienced, though
it has been building for centuries, indeed, from the beginnings of humanity’s
time on earth. For we are the animal who became human by producing. Production
is about the transforming of nature—the real physical world that is our legacy
and matrix—into the objects we use for our lives. Transforming nature means
changing nature; and changes may be harmful as well as beneficial as they build
up over historical time.

Today, the harm wrought by human production has
reached intolerable proportions. Our generation has inherited a world both
transformed and deformed, to a degree that raises the question of whether
humanity can continue to produce the means of its own survival. We see this
taking shape in the menaces of climate change, massive species extinctions,
pollution on a scale never before encountered, and more—all signs that humanity
has so de-stabilized nature and our relation to it as to raise the real
question of whether Homo sapiens, a species that has triumphed over nature to
build the mighty civilization that now rules over the earth, has also prepared
the ground for its own extinction.

The
ecological crisis and capital accumulation

De-stabilization
of the natural foundation of society is the supreme question for our age, and
because collective survival is at stake, the greatest challenge ever faced by
humanity. Because it involves relationships between ourselves and nature, and
because the study of relationships between living creatures and their natural
environment is named ecology, we can say that what we are going through is an
ecological crisis. But whether its meaning is properly understood is another
story. Unhappily, despite a vast amount of scientific investigation into the
individual disasters that manifest the ecological crisis, there is very little
awareness of its causes and real character, or even that it is an ecological
crisis, between humanity as part of nature and nature itself. Instead, the
dominant opinion, from all points of the political compass from left to right,
sees this crisis under the heading of “environmentalism,” which is to say, as
something between ourselves and the external things of nature.

Environmental
problems appear as a great set of discrete troubles, itemized like a huge
shopping list. The movement that attempts to deal with “the environment” also
becomes listed among other worthy causes, like jobs, health care, and the
rights of sexual minorities. Environmental problems are accordingly dealt with
by regulations, legislation, and policy changes under the watchful eye of a
host of NGOs dealing with one aspect of the disruption in nature or another.
These petition large bureaucracies like the UN carbon regulation system or the
EPA. Typically environmentalism seeks technical fixes or personal lifestyle
changes, such as recycling and buying “green” products.

There is
nothing wrong with environmentalism, except that it completely ignores the root
of the ecological crisis by focusing on external symptoms and not the
underlying disease. This is as effective in mending the ecological crisis as
treating cancer with aspirin for the pain and baths for the discomfort. In
other words, the prevailing approach fails to recognize that what is happening
is the sign of a profound disorder.

Environmentalism cannot ask what can be
wrong with a society that so ravages the earth, but simply attempts to tidy up
the mess in a piecemeal and fundamentally doomed fashion. Of course, each and
every ecological threat must be vigorously met on its own terms. But we need to
see the whole of things as well. We cannot put nature on a list, even at the
head of a list. Nature is the entirety of the universe. We are a part of
nature, and our society reflects whether we are at home in nature or estranged
from it. Failure to understand this on the deepest level and to make necessary
changes in our relationship to nature puts everything at risk, including, most
poignantly, the lives of our children and grandchildren and all future
generations.

If the
choices embedded in our society lead to ruin and death, then the obligation is
to remake society from the ground up in the service of life. And if this be
read as a demand for revolution, so be it! But a revolution of what kind?

Look at the
society that rules the earth and its guiding inner dynamic, the production of
capital. However capitalism may be dressed up as the society of democracy, free
markets, or progress, its first and foremost priority is economic Growth, the
eternal expansion of the economic product across society, converted into
monetary units. The best word for this compulsion is accumulation.

The
accumulation of capital is the supreme value of capitalists, and all elements
of capitalist society—from control over resources, to labor relations, to
fiscal and tax policy, to culture and propaganda, to the workings of academia,
to war and imperialism, and to be sure, policy towards the natural
world–converge to gratify this hunger. Any diminution or even slowing of the
rate of accumulation, is perceived as a deep threat provoking the most
ruthless, violent, countermeasures to restore order. As Marx vividly wrote in
Capital: “Accumulate! Accumulate! That is Moses and the Prophets.” In other
words, he saw a religious impulse at work—Satanic in form, no doubt—driving the
capitalist system to convert the entire earth, its oceans and atmosphere, everything
under the sun, into commodities, to be sold on the market, the profits
converted to capital.

Here we
arrive at the obvious, straightforward, yet profound explanation of the
ecological crisis and its life-threatening character. For though the universe
itself may be infinite and have no boundaries, the corner of the universe
inhabited by life is quite finite and thoroughly bounded: that, after all, is
what ecology as a scientific study is about. So it follows that a system built
on un-boundedness and endless growth is going to destroy the ecosystems upon
which it depends for energy and other resources, and is also going to destroy
the human ecosystems, or societies, that have emerged from nature to inhabit
the earth. That this brutally obvious truth is not widely accepted is partly
the result of how hard it is to face up to a harsh reality, but chiefly the
result of the titanic effort waged by capitalist ideology to deny its
responsibility for the ruin of planet earth.

Seen in this
light, capitalism is truly pathological; it may well be called a kind of
metastasizing cancer: a disease that demands radical treatment, which in this
context, means revolutionary change. And since socialism is—or should be–the
movement toward the supersession of capitalism, the fact that the present
ecological crisis is basically driven by the accumulation of capital puts
socialism in a radically different position from that to which we have become
accustomed. In this light we see the need to radicalize socialism and turn it
to ecological ends alongside, indeed, as part of, the provision of justice to
working people.

This means,
however, that socialism itself must be transformed and produced anew. It can no
longer be the reformist social democracy that has betrayed its promise by
seeking to perfect instead of going beyond capitalism. Socialism today must be
invigorated by the awareness that its goal is a post-capitalist society serving
the well-being of humanity and nature alike. Most critically, because
accumulation is the mainspring of capitalist society, the new socialism must
respect the notion of limits and see production itself in ecological terms. The
test of a post-capitalist society is whether it can move from the generalized
production of commodities to the production of flourishing, integral
ecosystems. In doing so, socialism will become ecosocialism.

First
ecosocialist lessons

Nobody is
under the illusion that we are anywhere near these goals. But that does not
mean that we lack a mapping of the route toward ecosocialism. Let me give an
outline of this, and conclude this brief communication with a sense of how
these can be applied to a case of the greatest urgency: overcoming the menace
of climate change.

Ecosocialism
is still socialism. What was stated at the beginning of this article remains.
The basic principle of ecosocialism is that of socialism itself: freely
associated labor. It is safe to say that application of this is the key to
everything else. For ecosocialism, the restoration of nature does not begin with
manipulating the external environment, but with the liberation of human beings
and faith that women and men in full possession of their powers will use the
appropriate technology and make the correct decisions as to how to organize
their social relations and self governance in such a way that the integrity of
nature is restored and preserved. The principle applies equally to the caring
for nature and the provision of a good life for humanity.

A common root is the
fact that to the degree we are in possession of our creative powers, so also do
we move beyond the addictive and false way of being indoctrinated into us from
cradle to grave by capitalism and its ideology of consumerism. We break loose
from the capitalist rat-race, of trying to fill our inner emptiness with
commodities, a motif absolutely necessary to the reproduction of the ecological
crisis. Instead, we recognize ourselves as natural creatures, and recognize
nature itself, thus positioning ourselves for nature’s restoration. This also
applies to the so-called “population problem,” since freely associated human
beings, women in particular, will have no trouble at all in regulating their
numbers. In sum, we would say that ecosocialism is that form of society
animated by freely associated labor and guided by an ethic of ecological
integrity such as free human beings would freely choose.

We free
ourselves in collective struggle, the meaning of which for ecosocialism is
primarily “Commoning.” Commons refers to the original communism of “First
Peoples”; and also to the absence of patriarchy and class society among them.
The word denotes collectively owned units of production. From the other side,
the rise of class society and patriarchy, all the way to the appearance of
capitalism and right through to the present day, is a matter of “enclosing” the
Commons, which includes separating people from control over their productive
activity, thereby alienating them from nature and their own powers. Commoning
can be as basic as making a community garden or day-care center. And it extends
all the way to building intentional communities, organized democratically, and
by extension, to a global society.

We see ecosocialism from a twofold aspect,
in terms of communities of resistance to capital and the capitalist state, and
as communities of production outside of capitalist hierarchical relations
between the owners of the means of production and the “wage slaves” who feed
the capital-monster. Traditional labor organizing can come under this heading,
insofar as it does not reproduce bureaucratic hierarchies; or, from another
standpoint, to the degree that it builds authentic “unions” and “solidarity,”
both terms drawn from the language of ecology as well as the history of class
struggle.

The wave of
“occupations” washing over the United States as this is being written is very
much an example of Commoning along ecosocialist lines, however scattered and
reformist many of their immediate demands may seem in this early stage of
development. Though the term itself is not applied, the structure is
ecosocialist , arising out of the fundamental human drive toward collective
control over a Commonly held space, both in terms of resistance—as by
disrupting the established governmental and corporate ways; and production—as
in providing the means of one’s own subsistence while doing so.

Time and
space are to be reclaimed through ecosocialist prefiguration.
Keeping this term in mind is essential in navigating the great distance between
where we are and what we need to become. Seizing a kind of Commons next to Wall
Street is both symbolic of immediate demands for economic justice and
prefigurative of liberated zones of ecosocialist production through freely
associated labor. Our sustainable and worthwhile future will be a network of Commonal
zones, beginning small but spreading and connecting across the artificial
boundaries set up by class society and capital.

Thus ecosocialism is
transnational, global in scope, and above all, visionary; and each local moment
of Commoning will contain the germ of this imagining. Prefiguration means the
emerging of the vision necessary to imagine a world beyond the death-dealing
society of capital. We need to see the coming-to-be of the new society in the
scattered campgrounds of occupied zones within the capitalist order. Without
vision, the people perish, as the saying goes. And with vision—and organizing
to match—a new and better world can be won.

Postscript:
An ecosocialism beyond climate change.

Nothing
stands more for the horrors induced by capital-driven ecological crisis than
the specter of climate change. There is no space here for detailing this
menace, which, while not identical with the ecological crisis as a whole,
suffices to sum up its deadly mechanisms and is full of lessons for how these are
to be surmounted. Let me put the matter with extreme brevity to draw out some
essentials and the important lessons to be derived from them.

We stand on a
kind of crumbling precipice whose “geology” is given by growing atmospheric CO2
loaded by our capitalist-industrial, accumulation-compelled system. The
precipice is both a matter of harm already done, and, if successful action is
not taken, far worse harm to come from positive feedback loops that will
effectively exceed human capacity to contain them, dooming us, perhaps by the
end of the century, perhaps sooner, to downfall via catastrophic climate
events, rising seas, and associated nightmares like famine and pandemic
diseases.

Two
configurations are now assembling to do battle over the fate of this future.
One is that of capital and the capitalist state: the ancien regime. It is
addicted to growth, rapacious for resources, and seeks to finagle its way out
of the crisis by an utterly bankrupt system of commodifying nature and trading
pollution credits; that is, it seeks more paths of accumulation while
continuing its resource extraction, and the future be damned.

The other is
ecosocialist in concept and prefigurative in structure. It sets forth from
multiple points of resistance, notably combining North and South by bringing
together a coalition of ecosocialists, radical climate activists and
specialists in renewable energy; these are increasingly working with indigenous
folk whose lives are directly threatened by enclosures and ever-more violent
methods of hydrocarbon extraction from places as varied as the Gulf of Mexico
(deep offshore drilling), Northern Alberta (tar sands extraction), the Niger
Delta and Peruvian Ecuadorian rainforests (rapacious oil-drilling), West
Virginia (mountaintop removal for coal), and rural New York and Pennsylvania
(hydrofracking for natural gas).

The list is quite partial, but the scope is
global and inherently ecosocialist, by involving Commoning, global resistance,
and prefigurative efforts to think the unthinkable: a world actually beyond
hydrocarbon-based industrialization, that is, one where the future is really
envisioned and the visionary is made real as a mode of production liberated
from the compulsion to accumulate and loyal to the ecocentric respect for
limit.

The best
science tells us that this is the only path of survivability. But the best
science cannot be implemented within existing capitalism. It will take freely
associated labor, motivated by an ecocentric ethic and organized on a vast
scale, to effect these changes—in terms of resistance to the given carbon
system and forcing through its alternative; and also in terms of actually
building the alternative, a kind of Solar/Wind-based energy economy, including
the effort to actually bring down the level of atmospheric CO2 from 395ppm to
345ppm.

Unthinkable,
right? Wrong: it is only unthinkable to minds chained to the ruinous and
suicidal capital system. Quite possible though fantastically challenging,
otherwise—especially if we consider that such a path, once free from bondage to
accumulation, will be able to solve the problems of structural unemployment
that haunt capitalist society. Imagine the creative possibilities inherent in
an ecosocialist energy pathway. Then think, and choose whether to stay with the
present system, or to step forth into a renewed world.

Thursday, 21 September 2017

How did
Britain get into this mess? We are the laughing stock of Europe, and no doubt
many other places around the world. A country once renowned for its stability,
pragmatism, tolerance and distaste of extremist politics, now represents
something like the polar opposite.

The latest
instalment of this national embarrassment is Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson’s
public disagreement with other government ministers, including the prime
minister, over arrangements for our exiting from the European Union (EU) and is
classic farce. But, as I say, this is just the latest comedy sketch in a long
running show, so where did it all begin?

The Tory
Party has been riven with infighting over things European since at least the
late 1980s, and as former leader and prime minister, David Cameron, famously
warned his party when in opposition, they should stop ‘banging on about
Europe.’ They did a bit, but for a price.

Cameron had
to promise the Tory Euro-sceptics a referendum on Britain’s membership of the
EU, to keep the peace in the Tory Party. He got lucky in some ways when he
became prime minister in 2010. His government had no overall majority, so he
had to rely on the pro EU Lib Dems to govern. This was his excuse to the Tory
Euro-sceptics for not trying to hold a referendum in that Parliament.

But he had to
promise one for early in the next Parliament after 2015, if the Tories won a
majority. My bet is that Cameron didn’t think he would get a majority, and so
would not have to follow through on the referendum pledge. But he got unlucky, and the
Tories did indeed get a small majority at the 2015 general election.

To buy a bit
more time Cameron said he would first try to re-negotiate our terms of
membership of the EU, and then put this to a vote. He didn’t get any meaningful
concessions though, which no one really expected him to, and so we had the
referendum in 2017. Cameron supported the Remain campaign, but the public voted
the other way.

Let us not forget, there was no great groundswell for a referendum on EU membership, but
UKIP were picking up votes, mainly from Tory voters, and Tory MPs, particularly
the Euro-sceptics worried about this, and they saw their chance of forcing
Cameron’s hand. The banging on about Europe was back with a vengeance.

I have never
been a fan of referendums, which reduce often complex issues down to a binary
choice, and where the rival campaigns generally boil down to the lowest common
denominator. Such was the case last year with the EU membership one.

The fact
Cameron even contemplated such a high risk strategy with the country’s
well-being is a measure of the grip the issue of Europe has in the Tory Party.
Indeed the EU has been a matter of internal Tory Party management since John
Major became their leader in 1990. Everything that has been played out in
British politics since we got a Tory government in 2010 has been dominated by
the anti-EU tantrums of the Tory Party right.

Our current
hapless Tory prime minister, Theresa May, can’t cope with the issue either. She
voted to Remain, then following Cameron’s inevitable resignation, she won the
leadership as her rivals ran around stabbing each other in the back. May played
virtually no part in the referendum campaign, which tells us that she thought
we would vote to remain, but didn’t want to spoil her future chances of the
leadership, by being too vocal about it.

Boris Johnson
showed no sign of wanting to leave the EU, as even his father and sister have
said, before the referendum campaign was called. He probably thought we would
vote to remain but he positioned himself for a future tilt at the leadership of
his party. This is demonstrated by him having no plan in place whatsoever for
what would happen after Brexit. It was pure political opportunism.

The backdrop
to this shambles is of a country with the lowest GDP growth in the EU and G20,
a devaluation of our currency, inflation up, wages stagnating, national debt almost
doubled to a historic high of nearly £2 trillion, personal debt at a record
high, public services cut, a spike in xenophobic hate crimes and our international
reputation damaged. In response the Tories are fiddling while Rome burns.

So there we have it. Tory obsession with a niche political issue, and personal political ambition, has led us to this sorry path we find ourselves on today. The Tories don’t give a fuck about this country, all they care about is themselves. Incompetent, yes, traitors even?

Tuesday, 19 September 2017

As previously reported
on this blog, Haringey Council in north London is planning to go ahead with
a £2 billion redevelopment of its public housing stock, gentrifying neighbourhoods
and pricing local people out of living in the area. But a grassroots campaign
against Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) has been building.

The coalition of people, groups and political parties across
the borough for social housing and against social cleansing, and now includes
leaseholders in the west of the borough who are being compulsorily purchased to
make way for the corporate-led demolition and re-development. This coalition includes
the local Labour Party, local Green Party, local Lib Dems and tenants and
residents associations and community groups, and trades unions.

Haringey council is controlled by the Labour Party. Haringey
which has the largest constituency parties of the Labour Party anywhere in
England is now a test bed on where politicians stand on the need for decent
social housing and against social cleansing. Labour Cabinet members even are,
at least in one case I know, starting to dissociate themselves completely from
the HDV.

Both of Haringey’s Labour MPs, David Lammy in Tottenham and
Catherine West in Hornsey and Wood Green, oppose the development.

Partly because we found out from a Freedom of Information
request, that there has been a secret ‘shadow’ inner cabinet process of
meetings with Lendlease, the preferred developer, from before the point of them
being agreed as preferred bidder for the contract on HDV. This included the
member recently appointed to be on the putative HDV Board, Cllr. Elin Weston
who is now the lead member for children and families.

I crowd funded £25,000 to pay for legal fees for a Judicial Hearing
which will be held in the High Court - Royal Courts of Justice on The Strand -
on 25 and 26 October, where there will be a presence outside from 9:30 on 25th.

This could lead to a landmark decision on how Councils,
through their Cabinets, make decisions on property deals with big developers
altering the whole nature of communities, at the expense of the less well-off
and poor, as has been happening across London and mainly by Labour councils.
Issues in front of the court include lack of basic democracy, consultation,
equalities impact, commercial secrecy and fair process.

There is a march and demonstration in Haringey this
Saturday, 23 September, against HDV. Folks from elsewhere in London will be
attending too (e.g. Cressingham Gardens, Lambeth in south London, who are campaigning
against a similar development in their borough and who have also been in
Judicial Review).

The march starts at Tottenham Green, at 12 noon and onto Ducketts
Common (site of the massive defeat of the NF by the community in the late 70s)
down Green Lanes - one of the last roads that hasn’t been totally taken over by
corporate franchises - and finishes at 2pm at the Manor House tube end of
Finsbury Park. Sian Berry, Green Party London Assembly Member, has agreed to
speak at demo/end of the march.

There is also a benefit gig with Potent Whisper and others
at The Beehive pub in Tottenham from 7pm
on Saturday evening. The film Dispossession, The Great Social Housing Swindle
is being shown at the Haringey
Independent Cinema in West Green this Thursday evening.

Immediately at risk are 1300 homes on Northumberland Park
estate, Tottenham, behind them are hundreds and hundreds more on multiple
estates, this is people's homes, this is the reality of London in 2017.

A good presence on the demonstration this coming Saturday will
be really important to keep up the momentum that is building, especially given
what is now happening in the local Labour Party. Support this campaign against
this cruel social cleansing operation which is threatening to spread to many other
parts of London.

Sunday, 17 September 2017

There is no
doubt that the human species has had a profound affect on the natural world.
Deforestation, pollution of air, land and sea, other species extinctions (or
near extinctions), ozone layer depletion and rising global temperatures. Not a
record to be proud of. All of which have been accelerated since the industrial
revolution. Indeed the industrial revolution would have been impossible without
fossil fuels providing the extra energy and the economic growth that came with it. Now we are starting to see the ecological consequences our behaviour.

Of course,
there are many, usually completely unqualified to make such pronouncements, who deny
man’s part in climate change. I expect they will be out in force when they see
this post. But the science is clear, and the evidence gets stronger all of the time,
that the climatic changes that are occurring, and they are occurring, is
related to human activity. Namely, burning fossil fuels, which produces carbon,
one of the main greenhouse gases which causes the planet to warm.

Our
capitalist economic system, is remarkably adaptive, in that it can seemingly
monetise almost anything, and climate change and its ability to cause ‘natural’
disasters is no different. Naomi Klein details this at length in her book The
Shock Doctrine, written in 2007, and subtitled The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Disasters allow an opportunity to make money, which is all that really counts
in capitalism.

What the
system cannot do though, is resolve the problem of climate change. All kinds of
techno-fixes will be put forward, because they are likely to make money, but this
is merely greenwash. The central logic of the system, grow or die, the pursuit
of infinite economic growth, will not allow a solution to be found.

We are in
the hurricane season now, and this year has produced some spectacular and
destructive storms already. The ones that attract the most attention are of
course, those which make landfall in the USA. Harvey and Irma fit the bill
perfectly.

But there is
an avoidance of discussion of the causes of such powerful storms, which is attributed to ‘natural
causes’. Which they are, but the strength of these hurricanes is increased by
warmer sea water, something like 1C warmer in the Gulf of Mexico over the last 40 years, which is
sucked up into the storm. To reinforce this avoidance of the discussion of causes, as the Green MP, Caroline
Lucas found, mentioning this inconvenient truth, provokes attacks from
right wing politicians and their friends in the mainstream media.

The idea
that we can tame nature or just ignore it altogether is running out of road though,
with each hurricane, flood or drought that occurs. In the UK, we are lucky to
not experience many strong hurricanes, but each winter sees more and more
flooding and I expect this year will be no different. More money goes on flood
defences, but the floods keep happening. We can’t hold back nature indefinitely,
we need to address the causes, but you will see little action in this
direction.

Twentieth
century socialism was not immune from the delusion of humanity being able to
control nature either. Leon Trotsky famously declared that the ‘socialist
superman’ would move mountains and redirect rivers all to the benefit of his
socialist utopia. But the USSR had probably an even worse record than
capitalist nations in degrading the environment, and of course failed to bring
nature to heel.

But our
problem now is solely with capitalism, and the experience of the British so
called entrepreneur Richard Branston, is an example in microcosm. I say so
called because the extent these days of his entrepreneurship is taking
government contracts to run previously publicly run services, like railways. He owns an airline and also has plans for space aeroplanes to be run commercially, which will make climate change even worse. Ironically, he likes to think of himself as 'green'.Branston
owns the Caribbean island of Necker, which bore the
full brunt of Hurricane Irma, and all the great tycoon could do was cower
in his basement as the storm raged across the island.

Nature
cannot be tamed, we have to work with it, everything we do needs to be
ecocentric, carefully designed to compliment nature. But there is just no money
to be made that way under our current economic system, so it will not happen.
Ecosocialism is the only way to go. System Change, Not Climate Change.